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Monday, April 2, 2012

Map of Oz Monday - The 1914 Map of Oz

Last week we looked at the earliest Map of the Land of Oz. Today we explore the first detailed map of the Land of Oz, and to my mind, the most important - the map included as the front endpaper of the first edition of Tik-Tok of Oz in 1914.

1914 Map of the Land of Oz - CLICK TO ENLARGE

I have no doubt L. Frank Baum drew and designed this map (though publisher Reilly & Britton probably had a staff artist prepare the final inked drawing). Indeed, Baum's involvement in the creation of this map is what to me gives it such authenticity. L. Frank Baum decided on the shapes of the countries, their borders, mountains and rivers, etc.

One can truly see Baum's mind at work in many of the choices he made - especially in the fact that he added locations to the map that he had not yet written about, such as Mount Munch, Jinxland, the Yips, Skeezers, as well as a vast forest in the Gillikin Country and a large lake just outside the Emerald City. Baum eventually used the forest in The Magic of Oz when we learned it was the Forest of Gugu but he never made use of the lake.

Before I go any further in my analysis of the Tik-Tok maps, I guess I had better address the most controversial aspect of this map - that east and west are reversed in the Land of Oz. Again, I have no doubt this is L. Frank Baum's intention. Mainly because no other explanation makes sense. In the Oz books Baum always has the Munchkins in the east and the Winkies in the west with no exceptions.

There have been many half-baked notions on how Baum might have made such a supposedly grievous error. One of the silliest is that he based his map on the glass Magic-Lantern slide of the "Fairylogue map," and that Baum simply viewed the slide from the wrong side. Could you look at the glass slide below and not realize it was backward?

Perhaps Baum just confused his east and west directions? Uh huh ... and neither Baum, nor his wife, or the artist who redrew it, or John R. Neill, or the publisher ever said, "Hey LFB, you got your compass points wrong!" If Baum had some moment of directional dyslexia when he drew the rough map, there are just too many eyes and too many steps, from his sketchy doodles to finished drawing, to making proofs, to printing the book, for this not to have been EASILY corrected. If it wasn't corrected - it wasn't an error - thus, this is how Baum viewed Oz.

This seemingly wonky choice of Baum's may well have rankled Reilly & Britton because soon after Baum's death the publisher reissued the map with a "corrected" traditional compass and THAT caused a whole fairyland of trouble! But I'll save that discussion for a future blog post!

We will never know why Baum flipped east and west. Perhaps he planned to tell a tale about it he never got around to. My favorite theory in an "Oz as a real place" frame of mind is that the east/west flip has to do with how Glinda created the Barrier of Invisibility at the end of The Emerald City of Oz. After all, on the 1908 map the eastern Munchkins are seen on the right and the western Winkies are seen on the left - just like our directions. So this "Barrier of Invisibility" idea explains and validates both maps. In 1908 directions were normal, after 1910 they were flipped. This rationalization even solves the seeming error at the end of Ozma of Oz when the rescue party returns home from the Land of Ev and visits with the King of the Munchkins. In 1907 Ev was indeed across the desert from the Munchkin Country. After 1910 it was not. Is everybody still with me?

There are certainly a few problems with this mirror-flip Barrier of Invisibility theory. For one, the path of the sand boat doesn't work. And in the Map of Surrounding Countries (which we will discuss next week) the compass directions match those of Oz. Did Glinda flip directions for the entire continent?

There are a few small errors on this 1914 Oz map. The Truth Pond looks rather like the Truth Lake and the Yellow Brick Road is shown as being totally straight. It's certainly possible, but I think few people imagine it as such. It's interesting to note that Baum has it extend out of Oz and on into the Desert. It could be Baum failed to erase guidelines and the cartographer simply inked it all in? Or perhaps there was to be a story about this someday.

I've given some more thought to the fact that the Fairylogue map is square. Last week I suggested Baum had drawn Oz to be a square-shaped. I don't think so anymore - the map is too stylized. I think the Fairylogue Map is simply showing a smaller portion of Oz and the map simply doesn't extend to show the actual and perhaps then unknown borders. The Fairylogue Map's double-ruled delineation of the deadly desert does not show the actual border either, but only indicates that an unknown desert barrier surrounds all of Oz.

Overlay of 1908 map on top of 1914 map.

Perhaps the Fairylogue Map is simply an old and not very accurate map from the days before Ozma came to power, the poor quality of said map being what prompted Ozma to commission a new set of maps to be made by Professor Wogglebug (who researched and drew the Tik-Tok maps according to the map legend). It's interesting to note that overlaying the two maps like this almost exactly creates that weird little triangular bite out of the north-western Gillikin Country. Perhaps Baum did use the 1908 map as a starting point! That said, I still think the only clear reason for the east/west reversal can be a deliberate choice on his part. Might Ozma have more clearly delineated and expanded the green area around the Emerald City? It's not shown at all on the 1908 map yet seems almost a country in itself on the 1914 one.

Lastly, I was surprised to see that the 1914 Map of the Land of Oz has never been reprinted anywhere except for the Books of Wonder and Bradford Exchange reprints of Tik-Tok of Oz. The first edition of The Annotated Wizard of Oz claims to have reprinted them, but in fact used the "corrected" 1920 version. The first edition copy of Tik-Tok here in the Tiger Den was missing a portion of the upper right free endpaper. I replaced it from the Bradford Exchange reprint (notice the non-matching whiteness of the desert area). I've complained about mediocre reproduction in these Bradford Exchange books before and, alas, I have still another fresh complaint! Bradford has distorted the map endpapers - I had to squash and stretch that little corner to make it fit, so don't count on the BE Tik-Tok maps for accuracy - they've been reproduced somewhat warped.

20 comments:

One other theory I've heard about the reversed compass rose: That's how maps of the stars are oriented. So (the theory goes), if Oz is in the sky, that map is indeed correct. And that theory ties into the publicity materials for "Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz", so maybe there is something to that.

Interesting - but I think that would mean Oz has to be floating overhead, facing down toward earth, and in a geosynchronous orbit.

If Oz were on a planet or asteroid (as is suggested by QUEER VISITORS) then east and west would remain the same as for us unless said planet rotates backward. Assuming east is only determined by where the sun rises. But that would be exactly like earth if north and south were reversed, and neither of these scenarios solves the different set-up of the 1908 map.

I've always puzzled over the reversed map. I made a reference to it in "Outsiders," but made no attempt to explain it. Still, why Baum made such a baffling change puzzles me, nor why no one noticed until 1920 and did the even more confusing change of flipping the rose over.

My one thought is that perhaps Baum started designing the map with the earliest events in "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," where the action begins in the Munchkin Country, and he traced the yellow brick road path to the Emerald City, but had started on the wrong side of the paper by going left to right. Perhaps he intended this to be corrected but it never was.

Even if LFB did draw it backwards by some fool chance - all he had to do was scribble a note and say "please reverse the drawing when you make the finished art for the book." No sane person would fix the mistake by changing the direction-compass to compensate for an inaccurate drawing. This map was clearly a big deal for Baum - he even got the publishers to do a second different map at the end of the book. No one would spend the money to do four-color endpapers that were different front and back, and then not bother to correct a mistake that would be evident to everyone along the production schedule.

The floating doesn't seem to help much. IMHO. And it certainly isn't supported by the texts of the Oz books. Despite that fact that the 1914 compass is non-traditional it is in full agreement with the Baum Oz books.

It never bugged me personally until I saw Dick Martin's map and then I thought...oh! Is this how Oz is supposed to be?I stopped drawing the Tik Tok maps after that (I'd been using the Who's Who versions).As a kid, I had just accepted that Oz worked different than earth and that it was on another planet or another dimension.The idea of a retrograde planet solves it for me.

I do prefer Martin's maps since they solve most everything but the visit to the Munchkin Country in Ozma of Oz. (Maybe Ozma wanted to take the long way around the desert from Ev?)Unless someone wants to rewrite the Oz books to make sense then we will all just have to use our imaginations. And there is nothing wrong with that! :)

@SFA - Not sure I understand your comment. The TIK-TOK map isn't in WHO'S WHO. The WHO'S WHO map is kind of the absolute opposite of TIK TOK as it shows the Munchkins in the West.

What did Dick Martin's map solve? Dick's map is just a mirror image of the TIK-TOK map - both the geography AND the compass. Everything that's east is still east and everything that's west is still west.

There is another point that might be noted: the 1914 map (and others that copy it) have Ojo's home in the southern area of the Munchkin Country, and his PATCHWORK GIRL journey to the Emerald City going northward. Martin's Oz Club and 1968 Reilly & Lee maps have it in the north and the journey going southwards.

The star map theory made me think of another place where directions are reversed: the theatre. "Stage left" is the audience's right, and vice versa. Given Baum's theatrical background, could that have been in his mind? I kind of like the idea of Oz as a stage.

While theatre directions have often played havoc with my own sense of right and left I find it hard to believe it had much effect of Baum's sens of east and west. Those two directions aren't subjective. The sun rises in the east regardless of where you view it from.

Yet another point is the nameless lake in the Emerald City area near the Winkie Country. Neill later calls it "Lake Quad" in his books and I believe it also figures in the unfinished stoty attributed to Baum, "The Littlest Giant". It is notable that in northern Winkie Country in the 1908 FAIRYLOGUE map there is a lake that is never noted again -- perhaps Baum moved it to the present area? In any event, none of his published writings mention it.

Also, I believe that March Laumer deals with the east-west mix-up in his book THE MAGIC MIRROR OF OZ.

As for Dick Martin's maps solving issues, I just felt they added in some things that followed the books more accurately, such as the locations of Hi Land and Lo land being an island and shrinking areas like the Yips and Skeezers.

I suppose after Thompson's books that shrinking those areas was necessary.

@anonymousI don't really understand why he moved Ojo's house north though, but I'm pretty sure it was because the text mentions it being near the Gillikin Country even though his house is said to be near Hammer Head Mountain.There could be two Hammer Head Mountains though, I guess.

@SFA - I guess I don't view the WHO'S WHO map as the TIK-TOK map because it flipped the compass makign the Munchkins in the west. My references i nthese blog to the TIk-TOK map will always be in reference to the way it's printed in TIK-TOK with the Munchkins i nthe East (albeit on the left hand side of the page). So I'd sat the WHO'S WHO map is based on the 1920 reprint of the map.

An alternative to the theory of Oz being up in the sky facing the earth: Try thinking of the map, not as an aerial view looking down from outer space, but as a view looking up from the center of the earth. This may just be an unconventional map projection, or it might imply that Oz and Nonestica are on the interior surface of a hollow earth, like Pellucidar. For comparison, see the reversed E and W compass points in some Pellucidar maps: http://www.bouncepage.com/Pellucidar/maps.html

Oz works perfectly in a Hollow Earth. One where you go underground and gravity reverses itself when you reach the land of Oz. This would require a separate sun in the center of the earth and a floating night veil. I'm not sure how exposed to the Hollow Earth Theory Baum was though.